A powerful investigation into the chances for humanity's future from the author of the bestseller The World Without Us.
In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet-only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature.
But with a million more of us every 4 1/2 days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth--and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth?
Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth. The result is a landmark work of reporting: devastating, urgent, and, ultimately, deeply hopeful.
By vividly detailing the burgeoning effects of our cumulative presence, Countdown reveals what may be the fastest, most acceptable, practical, and affordable way of returning our planet and our presence on it to balance. Weisman again shows that he is one of the most provocative journalists at work today, with a book whose message is so compelling that it will change how we see our lives and our destiny.

This book provides examples of possible triple-win solutions for simultaneously reducing poverty, raising the quality of the environment, and adapting to climate change. The book provides empirical evidence and observations from sixteen case studies in Southeast and East Asia, and from the Pacific. It argues that a spatial approach focussing on the environments in which the poor and vulnerable live, would trigger changes for development policies and implementation that better balance environmental and social concerns. In line with the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda, emphasizing integrated development approaches for the slum poor, the upland poor, the dryland poor, the coastal poor, and the flood-affected wetland poor, would also bring the environment and poverty agenda closer.

Scientists turn to metaphors to formulate and explain scientific concepts, but an ill-considered metaphor can lead to social misunderstandings and counterproductive policies, Brendon Larson observes in this stimulating book. He explores how metaphors can entangle scientific facts with social values and warns that, particularly in the environmental realm, incautious metaphors can reinforce prevailing values that are inconsistent with desirable sustainability outcomes. Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability draws on four case studies--two from nineteenth-century evolutionary science, and two from contemporary biodiversity science--to reveal how metaphors may shape the possibility of sustainability. Arguing that scientists must assume greater responsibility for their metaphors, and that the rest of us must become more critically aware of them, the author urges more critical reflection on the social dimensions and implications of metaphors while offering practical suggestions for choosing among alternative scientific metaphors.

Fossil fuels propelled industries and nations into the modern age and continue to powerfully influence economies and politics today. As "Energy Capitals" demonstrates, the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels has proven to be a mixed blessing in many of the cities and regions where it has occurred.
With case studies from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Africa, and Australia, this volume views a range of older and more recent energy capitals, contrasts their evolutions, and explores why some capitals were able to influence global trends in energy production and distribution while others failed to control even their own destinies. Chapters show how local and national politics, social structures, technological advantages, education systems, capital, infrastructure, labor force, supply and demand, and other factors have affected the ability of a region to develop and control its own fossil fuel reserves. The contributors also view the environmental impact of energy industries and demonstrate how, in the depletion of reserves or a shift to new energy sources, regions have or have not been able to recover economically.
The cities of Tampico, Mexico, and Port Gentil, Gabon, have seen their oil deposits exploited by international companies with little or nothing to show in return and at a high cost environmentally. At the opposite extreme, Houston, Texas, has witnessed great economic gain from its oil, natural gas, and petrochemical industries. Its growth, however, has been tempered by the immense strain on infrastructure and the human transformation of the natural environment. In another scenario, Perth, Australia, Calgary, Alberta, and Stavanger, Norway have benefitted as the closest established cities with administrative and financial assets for energy production that was developed hundreds of miles away.
Whether coal, oil, or natural gas, the essays offer important lessons learned over time and future considerations for the best ways to capture the benefits of energy development while limiting the cost to local populations and environments.

This book is an original, accessible, and thought-provoking introduction to the severe and broad-ranging challenges that climate change presents and how societies can respond. It synthesizes and deploys cutting-edge scholarship on the range of social, economic, political, and philosophical issues surrounding climate change. The treatment is introductory, but the book is written "with attitude", for nobody has yet charted in coherent, integrative, and effective fashion a way to move societies beyond their current paralysis as they face the challenges of climate change. The coverage begins with an examination of science, public opinion, and policy making, with special attention to organized climate change denial. The book then moves to economic analysis and its limits; different kinds of policies; climate justice; governance at all levels from the local to the global; and the challenge of an emerging "Anthropocene" in which the mostly unintended consequences of human action drive the earth system into a more chaotic and unstable era. The conclusion considers the prospects for fundamental transition in ideas, movements, economics, and governance.

"Toxic Airs "brings together historians of medicine, environmental historians, historians of science and technology, and interdisciplinary scholars to address atmospheric issues on a spectrum of scales from body to place to planet. The chapters analyze airborne and atmospheric threats posed to humans, and contributors demonstrate how conceptions of toxicity have evolved and how humans have both created and mitigated toxins in the air.
Specific topics discussed include medieval beliefs in the pestilent breath of witches, malarial theory in India, domestic and military use of tear gas, Gulf War Syndrome, Los Angeles smog, automotive emissions control, the epidemiological effects of air pollution, transboundary air pollution, ozone depletion, the contributions of contemporary artists to climate awareness, and the toxic history of carbon "die"-oxide. Overall, the essays provide a wide-ranging historical study of interest to students and scholars of many disciplines.

Historians have long viewed the massive reshaping of the American landscape during the New Deal era as unprecedented. This book uncovers the early twentieth-century history rich with precedents for the New Deal in forest, park, and agricultural policy. Sara M. Gregg explores the redevelopment of the Appalachian Mountains from the 1910s through the 1930s, finding in this region a changing paradigm of land use planning that laid the groundwork for the national New Deal. Through an intensive analysis of federal planning in Virginia and Vermont, Gregg contextualizes the expansion of the federal government through land use planning and highlights the deep intellectual roots of federal conservation policy.

In August 2003, one of the largest wildfires in Canadian history struck near Kelowna, British Columbia and the surrounding Okanagan Valley, causing unprecedented damage. As Shelley Pacholok observes in this innovative study, the turbulence and extreme conditions that followed in the wake of this disaster destabilized an important area of social life - that of gender relations. Into the Fire combines insights from gender studies and disaster studies to explore the extent to which notions of "masculinity" and "femininity" are challenged in the wake of crises. Pacholok focuses on how gender relations were simultaneously sustained and disrupted among those who fought the fire, drawing on media representations as well as interviews with firefighters . Into the Fire illuminates how disasters can serve as catalysts for new patterns of gender, even in highly masculine spaces.

We are living in the midst of the Earth's sixth great extinction event, the first one caused by a single species: our own. In "Wild Dog Dreaming, " Deborah Bird Rose explores what constitutes an ethical relationship with nonhuman others in this era of loss. She asks, Who are we, as a species? How do we fit into the Earth's systems? Amidst so much change, how do we find our way into new stories to guide us? Rose explores these questions in the form of a dialogue between science and the humanities. Drawing on her conversations with Aboriginal people, for whom questions of extinction are up-close and very personal, Rose develops a mode of exposition that is dialogical, philosophical, and open-ended.

An inspiration for Rose--and a touchstone throughout her book--is the endangered dingo of Australia. The dingo is not the first animal to face extinction, but its story is particularly disturbing because the threat to its future is being actively engineered by humans. The brazenness with which the dingo is being wiped out sheds valuable, and chilling, light on the likely fate of countless other animal and plant species.

"People save what they love," observed Michael Soule, the great conservation biologist. We must ask whether we, as humans, are capable of loving--and therefore capable of caring for--the animals and plants that are disappearing in a cascade of extinctions. Wild Dog Dreaming engages this question, and the result is a bold account of the entangled ethics of love, contingency, and desire.

Environmental migration is not new. Nevertheless, the events and processes accompanying global climate change threaten to increase human movement both within states and across international borders. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted an increased frequency and severity of climate events such as storms, cyclones and hurricanes, as well as longer-term sea level rise and desertification, which will impact upon people's ability to survive in certain parts of the world. This book brings together a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. With chapters by leading scholars in their field, it collects in one place a rigorous, holistic analysis of the phenomenon, which can better inform academic understanding and policy development alike. Governments have not been prepared to take a leading role in developing responses to the issue, in large part due to the absence of strong theoretical frameworks from which sound policy can be constructed. The specialist expertise of the authors in this book means that each chapter identifies key issues that need to be considered in shaping domestic, regional and international responses, including the complex causes of movement, the conceptualisation of migration responses to climate change, the terminology that should be used to describe those who move, and attitudes to migration that may affect decisions to stay or leave. The book will help to facilitate the creation of principled, research-based responses, and establish climate-induced displacement as an important aspect of both the climate change and global migration debates.

No matter what efforts we make to halt global warming, sea level rise will be an unavoidable part of our future. In The Flooded Earth , species extinction expert Peter D. Ward describes in intricate detail what our world will look like in 2050, 2100, 2300, and beyond. Even if we stopped all carbon dioxide emissions today, according to Ward, the seas will rise three feet by 2050 and nine feet by 2100. The effects of one meter of sea-level rise will be massive three meters will be catastrophic. Incursions of salt into the water table will destroy most of our best agricultural land, and corrosion will devour the electrical and fiber-optic systems of coastal cities, as well as our roads and bridges. Amsterdam, Miami, Venice and other cities might have to be abandoned. As icebound regions melt, meanwhile, new sources of oil, gas, minerals, and arable land will be revealed,and geopolitical battles will erupt over who owns the rights to them. Laying out a blueprint for a foreseeable future, Ward explains what politicians and policy makers around the world should be doing now to head off the worst consequences of this cataclysmic,and frighteningly inevitable,transformation.

'It is not a case of governments and companies putting royalties and profits before people; instead it is as though people don't matter at all ...' In Mine-Field, Paul Cleary counts the true cost of Australia's mineral addiction. Whether it be coal-seam gas, LNG or coal mega-mines, a resources rush is happening in just about every productive corner of our country. Yet at the same time oversight and regulation have been hollowed out. High-risk projects are being approved without proper assessment of the long-term consequences. Water resources, farmland and national parks are under threat, and people, communities and industries are being steamrolled. A ground-breaking piece of reporting by the author of Too Much Luck, Mine-Field plots the dubious networks created and greased by mining companies to get their projects through, and exposes regulatory gaps that must be addressed to prevent enormous and irreversible harm to our society and environment. 'Mine-Field provides a warts-and-all, no-holds-barred view of Australia's mining industry. It is a must-read for anyone making an informed judgement on where our nation is going.' Tony Windsor 'This important book is compelling in its storytelling and chilling in its facts. It storms into the mining debate with a clarion call for more effective regulation. If you read it, you can't help joining the chorus.' Geoff Cousins

"This engaged and vital edited volume brings together the varied viewpoints of academics, consultants and activists all concerned with the astonishing expansion of palm oil as a globally traded commodity. It reveals how this complex, contested and controversial expression of globalization transcends narrow national and sectoral interests, stimulating a transnational exchange of goods, capital and labour, as well as laws, norms, values and even understanding. Compelling, readable and insightful, the study shows that corporate responses to civil society's concerns about palm oil's role in global warming, human rights abuses, land grabbing and biodiversity loss, now need to be complemented by legal, regulatory and governance reforms to be effective." - Marcus Colchester, Director, Forest Peoples Programme

This Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (IPCC-SREX) explores the challenge of understanding and managing the risks of climate extremes to advance climate change adaptation. Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. Changes in the frequency and severity of the physical events affect disaster risk, but so do the spatially diverse and temporally dynamic patterns of exposure and vulnerability. Some types of extreme weather and climate events have increased in frequency or magnitude, but populations and assets at risk have also increased, with consequences for disaster risk. Opportunities for managing risks of weather- and climate-related disasters exist or can be developed at any scale, local to international. Prepared following strict IPCC procedures, SREX is an invaluable assessment for anyone interested in climate extremes, environmental disasters, and adaptation to climate change, including policymakers, the private sector, and academic researchers. Watch this new video produced by the IPCC:

2012 Reprint of 1949 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers diverse fields from evolutionary biology to webpage design. It postulates that animals, people, even well designed machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or "effort." This is perhaps best known or at least documented among researchers in the field of library and information science. Their principle states that an information seeking client will tend to use the most convenient search method, in the least exacting mode available. Information seeking behavior stops as soon as minimally acceptable results are found. This theory holds true regardless of the user's proficiency as a searcher, or their level of subject expertise. The principle of least effort is analogous to the path of least resistance. The principle was studied by linguist George Kingsley Zipf, author of this classic treatment of the subject. He theorized that the distribution of word use was due to the tendency to communicate efficiently with least effort and this theory is known as Zipf's Law.

This book is about the complicated and provocative ways nature, science, and religion intersect in real settings where people attempt to live in harmony with the physical environment. Scholars of philosophy, religious studies, and science and technology have been at the forefront of critiquing the roles of religion and science in human interactions with the natural world. Meanwhile, researchers in the environmental sciences have encountered disciplinary barriers to examining the possibility that religious beliefs influence social-ecological behaviours and processes simply because the issue resists quantitative assessment. The contributors to this book explore how scientific knowledge and spiritual beliefs are engaged to shape natural resource management, environmental activism, and political processes.

Award-winning geneticist John C. Avise guides this delightful voyage around the planet in search of answers to nature's mysteries. He demonstrates how scientists directly examine DNA to address long-standing questions about wild animals, plants, and microbes. Through dozens of stories that span the world, nature emerges as a realm where truth can be far stranger than fiction. From a 100-ton mushroom to egg-swapping birds, extinct ground sloths to microbes inside our bodies, Avise examines a cornucopia of natural-history topics and explains how today's modern genetic techniques offer novel insights.
Do armadillo litters really contain clones? When is a fig tree not just a single tree? Where have migratory whales traveled? Who are the mothers of the embryos carried by pregnant male seahorses? What insect was the world's earliest farmer? How closely related are Neanderthals to modern humans? Answers to these and many more questions are presented here in a straightforwad manner that reveals Avise's enthusiasm for uncovering nature's hidden ways. Each entry is accompanied by a beautiful illustration from Trudy Nicholson, widely recognized as one of today's leading nature artists.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Biology - Ecology, grade: 1,3, University of Heidelberg (Fakultat fur Biowissenschaften), 53 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Mosquito (Culicidae) fauna, biological methods to control Ae. aegypti larvae and community participation regarding the present dengue situation and vector control program were evaluated in Chulucanas district, Piura Department, Peru. The study included collection and identification of mosquito larvae in surrounding towns of and in Chulucanas city. Following mosquito species were found: Ae. aegypti, Ae. scapularis, Ae. serratus, An. albimanus, An. pseudopunctipennis, Cx. nigripalpus and Cx. pipiens quinquefasciatus. Two comparative residual effect tests with Bti-based Culinex Tab plus(r) and Temephos-based Temefar(r) 1%G were performed in large and small water volumes under laboratory conditions. In the tests with large water volumes, Temefar(r) 1%G and Culinex Tab plus(r) showed a residual effect of 9 weeks (100% and 75% mortality, respectively), and, in tests with small water volumes, a residual effect of 7 weeks (100% mortality for both larvicides). Three efficacy tests performed with Culinex Tab plus(r) at three houses in Chulucanas city under field conditions showed 100% mortality after 24 h of larvicide application. In connection with this tests, an adult person living in each house was interviewed regarding Bti- and Temephos-based larvicides, the present vector control program and community participation. Considering these interviews, a personal testimonial, other statistical social data such as poverty levels, socioeconomic indicators and one survey concerning approval of the present vector control program, it is concluded that lack of knowledge of handling with larvicides and low acceptation regarding present vector control activities may be the main causes for the dengue outbreak in J

Swine flu. Bird flu. Massive fish kills and filthy river systems. Recalls of spinach, lettuce, and other vegetables because of E-coli bacteria contamination. Eric Schlosser's classic "Fast Food Nation" revealed how our meat is bred, raised, and brought to market. Now, in "Animal Factory", bestselling journalist David Kirby takes the next step, exposing the devastating health and environmental impact of large-scale factory farms. In this thoroughly researched book, Kirby follows three American families and communities - one in North Carolina, one in Illinois, and one in Washington state - whose lives are utterly changed by immense neighbouring animal farms. These farms (known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs), confine thousands upon thousands of pigs, dairy cattle, and poultry in small spaces, and generate enormous volumes of faecal and biological waste as well as other pollution to the air, land, and water. Weaving complex science, politics, business, and the lives of everyday people, Kirby accompanies a fisherman who fights to preserve his family's life and home; watches as a Midwestern community pushes back against a local farmer with grand ambitions; and interviews an unlikely activist, who takes on a powerful alliance of corporate and political entities when her home is covered with toxic soot and her water supply is compromised by runoff from lagoons of animal waste.

We are living in the midst of the Earth's sixth great extinction event, the first one caused by a single species: our own. In "Wild Dog Dreaming, " Deborah Bird Rose explores what constitutes an ethical relationship with nonhuman others in this era of loss. She asks, Who are we, as a species? How do we fit into the Earth's systems? Amidst so much change, how do we find our way into new stories to guide us? Rose explores these questions in the form of a dialogue between science and the humanities. Drawing on her conversations with Aboriginal people, for whom questions of extinction are up-close and very personal, Rose develops a mode of exposition that is dialogical, philosophical, and open-ended.

An inspiration for Rose--and a touchstone throughout her book--is the endangered dingo of Australia. The dingo is not the first animal to face extinction, but its story is particularly disturbing because the threat to its future is being actively engineered by humans. The brazenness with which the dingo is being wiped out sheds valuable, and chilling, light on the likely fate of countless other animal and plant species.

"People save what they love," observed Michael Soule, the great conservation biologist. We must ask whether we, as humans, are capable of loving--and therefore capable of caring for--the animals and plants that are disappearing in a cascade of extinctions. Wild Dog Dreaming engages this question, and the result is a bold account of the entangled ethics of love, contingency, and desire.

Diploma Thesis from the year 2006 in the subject Biology - Ecology, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Bremen, 83 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: A key question of plant ecology is which factors control the local distribution of plant species and plant communities. Thus the appearance of scattered tree dominated fertile patches in generally nutrient-poor savanna grassland is an interesting phenomenon. As trees alter structural and spatial variability of the environment they increase floral and faunal diversity. Under favourable conditions such patches may increase in size until they merge with each other and a closed canopy forest builds up. However, in dry areas successive invasion into grassland is blocked and there is little spread outwards. Research was conducted from September 2005 to January 2006 in the Western Soutpansberg, South Africa. For Mimusops zeyheri and Syzygium legatii effects of shade and seed size on germination and seedling recruitment have been investigated in plant pot experiments. Two field experiments were conducted investigating seed predation and the effect of competition. Additionally, recruitment was studied at eight tree islands and soil samples from 96 plots varying in exposition, habitat type and location of sampling site were analysed. Results revealed that tree recruitment was influenced by complex interactions between facilitation and competition, herbivory and abiotic environmental stress. Soil moisture availability, browsing and competition with grasses seem to be the primary factors limiting a rapid expansion of the tree islands into the surrounding grassland. Seed predation slightly reduces seed availability but is not limiting recruitment. Large-seeded seedlings had a higher chance of establishment. Key words: tree recruitment, islands of fertility, savanna, gradients, competition, Soutpansberg